


if i get high enough, will i see you again?

by MotherKarizma



Series: here comes the sun [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Family, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Everyone Loves Peter Parker, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Orphan Peter Parker, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Tony Stark, Sick Peter Parker, Substance Abuse, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, completed series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22746238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherKarizma/pseuds/MotherKarizma
Summary: Shadows danced across the walls, taunting him as he screamed, writhed, and cried. They hovered above him on the ceiling and threatened to devour him whole.“Please, please, no, please…”A hand cupped his face. Something cool and wet moved across his forehead.“It’s not real, kid. Whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t real. You’ve got a fever. You’re hallucinating.”They looked real – they felt real. How could they not be real?“Mister Stark. Don’t let them get me. Don’t leave.”“Already told you, kid, I’m not going anywhere. You’ve got me.”Peter drifted.-----Accepting Tony's help, difficult as it was, turns out to be the easiest part of Peter's day.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: here comes the sun [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633516
Comments: 41
Kudos: 1294
Collections: The Best Irondad/Spiderson Fics, The Best Peter Parker Whump Fics, ellie marvel fics - read





	if i get high enough, will i see you again?

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE TO NEW READERS: this is the second work in a 12-part series! i highly recommend reading the previous work first, then returning to this one, as this work makes little to no sense as a stand-alone.
> 
> to my returning readers: thank you so much for your warm reception of the first installment! i know there's not much of a market for drug addict peter fics, but i saw it as a perfect avenue with which to whump him, and EVERYONE loves peter whump, obvs. thank you for giving this series a chance! enjoy the second installment!
> 
> [nothing but thieves - if i get high](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0MUD0FDcqI&list=PL--__rC1yZPd7ZwlH5zNg7O_YSDgwDPuF&index=5)  
> \\\i'll meet you at the divide to break the spell  
> a point where two worlds collide, yeah we'll rebel  
> and we run and we run and we run and we run  
> until we break through  
> if i get high enough, will i see you again?//

The weight of reality fell heavy on Peter's shoulders as he cried, crouched in that wet alleyway, all at once tremendously overwhelmed and utterly relieved. The offer of help was a breath of fresh air to his aching lungs. He wasn't sure what to think, what to feel, what to say.

He thought, _thank you._ He felt grateful. Grateful and wholly unworthy.

“Thank you,” he cried as Tony knelt beside him, a hand rubbing his back in soothing circles, grounding him to the earth even as the heroin he’d taken only moments before threatened to lift him up up up into the stratosphere. “Thank you. I’m not – you’re just – thank you.”

Tony said, soft and hardly audible over the storm, “Don’t thank me. You’ve got so much potential, kid. You deserve better. Somebody should have told you that a long time ago.”

They did. It wasn’t that nobody had ever loved him, it was just that everyone who had ever loved him was dead. Peter wanted to scream as much from all the rooftops he’d ever slept on, from every rooftop in Queens: _leave now, Mister Stark, leave now while your heart is still kickdrum-beating, everyone I get close to dies._

“Thank you,” he repeated instead.

“You deserve help, PJs. You really do.”

He really didn’t. But it was, he supposed, the thought that counted.

* * *

Once Peter was as composed as he was going to get, Tony sent the Iron Man suit home by itself and called for someone named Happy to bring a car around.

Peter was quick to protest. “No, that’s – you don’t have to drive me, it’s fine. I have my suit. I can swing there.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t drive. Happy doesn’t mind. It’s literally what I pay him for.” Tony rubbed a hand down his weary face and sighed. “Also, no, you can’t go swinging around town right now. It’s pouring and you’re high.”

“I do it all the time.”

This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Peter didn’t realize as much until the words were already out in open air, and by then it was too late. Tony’s expression darkened.

“That’s…not a great idea.” His eyes narrowed. “Were you high when you fought with us last week?”

Last week? That felt like a cloudy memory from a past life.

“No,” Peter said honestly, glad that he didn’t have to lie, because something told him he was transparent in this man’s jaded eyes. “No, I was – I was on my way to…”

He trailed off with a jerky shrug, not meeting Tony’s eyes. Tony seemed to get the gist of it; he nodded.

They lapsed into silence. Peter stared anxiously at the road, stomach churning then settling each time headlights approached but passed them without pause. Meanwhile, Tony stared anxiously at _him._ Peter felt his eyes combing over him, searching for God knew what. Observing. Maybe sizing him up.

Finally, a sleek, black car stopped outside the alleyway. Tony ushered him in first, waved off his awkward, stuttered apologies about the rainwater dripping all over his perfect upholstery, and gave Happy a brief greeting. The man called Happy returned it with a wordless nod and put the car into drive, no questions asked about the stranger he’d just picked up off the streets. Peter bit back the urge to thank them for that, too.

Tony continued to stare at him. Peter continued to ignore it, watching the rain fall out his window, fingers tapping the seat, leg bouncing.

Tony asked, “Are you cold?”

Peter whirled around to look at him with wide eyes, just now taking into account the concern etched into the lines on Stark’s face. That was why his gaze had been locked onto Peter for the past ten minutes?

“Yeah,” he said quietly. He hadn’t realized it until Tony brought it up, but he was, in fact, freezing. A quick glance down at himself revealed that he was shaking from head to toe. He’d tuned the sensation out. He was used to being cold. “It’s just a drawback. You know – of my powers. Spiders can’t thermoregulate.”

God, he sounded like such a nerd.

For a moment, Tony continued to stare at him, and Peter looked sheepishly back. He was, honestly, a little jealous that Tony had first his suit to protect him from the rain and then the cover of the alley. He looked so dry and _warm._

Tony nodded and began to pull his faded MIT hoodie off. “Haps, turn the heater on, would you? Full blast.”

Happy was in a nice suit and surely not cold at all, but still he said, “Sure thing, Boss.”

Peter realized what Tony was doing half a second before the hoodie was tossed at him. He caught it, and his face blushed beet-red.

“Oh,” Peter said, horrified, “no, Mister Stark, I can’t just–“

“You can and you will. I don’t want to drag a hypothermic teenager into the Medical Wing. Those nurses are already so wary of me.”

“Because every time they see you, you’re bleeding all over them,” Happy quipped.

Tony inclined his head in agreement. “True.”

Peter desperately wanted to protest, because, shit, this was _Tony Stark’s hoodie_ – but the two older men had moved the conversation onward to other topics faster than he could blink. On purpose, he presumed, because if he tried to hand the hoodie back at this point, it would just seem petulant and ridiculous.

So Peter put it on instead.

“Thank you,” he said again, staring down at his lap. He swam in the worn garment, his hands nearly swallowed by the sleeves. The car’s heater brought some of the feeling back into his fingers. He flexed them experimentally.

Tony stared at him again, softer this time. Kinder.

“You’re welcome.”

* * *

Peter expected a stranger’s face to greet them when they arrived in the Medical Wing, a strict and stern doctor who would chew him out for his intravenous drug use and then proceed to callously stick him full of even more needles. Instead, there stood a soft-spoken, smiling Bruce Banner (who was still technically a stranger to him, but by no means an unfamiliar face).

“Hey, Spider-Man,” Doctor Banner said, and held out a hand for him to shake. Peter took it numbly. “I heard you could use some help detoxing.”

“I’ve read all your work,” Peter blurted before he could stop himself, thoroughly starstruck. “All your scientific papers, I mean. I did reports on you in high school. You’re a genius.”

Doctor Banner’s smile grew bashful. “Well, I wouldn’t say I’m a genius. But thank you, Mister…?”

It suddenly struck Peter that he was in the actual Avengers Tower, about to be medically detoxed from his drug of choice by said Avengers, free of charge or conditions – and none of them knew his real name.

They were saving his life just for the hell of saving it, and he hadn’t even thought to tell them his _name._

“Parker,” he offered up easily. “Peter Parker.”

“I was hoping you’d have a J last name,” Tony said, “so the PJs thing would stick.”

Peter ignored the quip, which he knew was only an attempt to lighten the mood. He didn’t feel lightened at all as he glanced between the two of them. “Doctor Banner, you don’t…I know you’re not a medical doctor. You don’t have to do this, really–“

“I want to,” Doctor Banner said. He gave Tony a wary glance, as if asking for permission. At Tony’s subtle nod, he continued: “When FRIDAY took your medical scan on the battlefield that day, she detected heroin in your system, but she didn’t tell Tony until after you took off. We’ve kind of been discussing a treatment plan since then, hoping Tony would be able to find you – and that you’d _want_ to be treated. I thought you might be more comfortable with a team member than a medical doctor you’d never met. For this first night, at least, I’ll just be observing your vitals, getting a read on your enchanced stats. Tomorrow we’ll bring in Doctor Patel, and then we can discuss…”

“Detoxing,” Peter said for him. His shoulders deflated at the reminder of his grim reason for being there. “Yeah, that…sounds good. Thank you, Doctor Banner.”

“Please, call me Bruce.”

Peter worked up a tired smile. “Bruce.”

“Oh, so you’ll call him Bruce but you’re still stuck on Mister Stark?” Tony scoffed and crossed his arms. “Whatever. I get it. Favoritism.”

Peter’s smile grew marginally wider, became a little more real. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like that, genuine and uncontainable, a small spark of happiness dragging the muscles upward of their own accord.

It felt nice.

* * *

It didn’t last.

At some ungodly hour of the night, Peter jolted from sleep with a gasp caught in his throat, eyes darting around the darkened Medical Wing. The monitors by his bedside were going haywire.

Everything _hurt._

Peter writhed on the bed, kicking sheets off his ankles.

“Mister Stark,” he cried out into the empty room. “Mister Stark, _please,_ help – Doctor Banner – please–“

A disembodied voice responded calmly from the ceiling. “Hello, Peter. You appear to be in distress. Would you like me to alert the on-call medical staff?”

Peter sobbed, gagged. “Yes. Yes. God, _please._ ”

“They have been contacted.”

Only a few minutes passed before Bruce hurried into the room, but it felt like a lifetime. Peter looked at him through tear-blurred eyes. He was in a rumpled shirt and sweatpants, barefoot, but his eyes were wide awake, face painted with alarm.

“Peter,” he exhaled.

“Please help me. Everything hurts, it hurts, please help me.”

“FRIDAY, lights at twenty percent,” Bruce said as he laid a steady hand on Peter’s very unsteady shoulder and looked over the information on the monitors. The room went from nearly pitch black to dimly lit.

Peter’s back arched off the medical bed as a particularly nauseating wave of agony rolled through his body. “Fuck! God, Bruce, Doctor Banner, _please._ It hurts. It hurts.”

Bruce knelt by the bed and locked dead-serious eyes with him. “Peter. I need you to be very honest with me. What have your using habits been like over the past few days? Have you recently increased your dosage? Your frequency?”

Peter thought about it. Thought about how he’d been taking on more clients since the battle, raking in more money than ever, and yet he still hadn’t had enough to eat anything that didn’t come out of a trashcan. Thought about the twenty different dealers he had in his contacts, alternating between three or four each day so none of them would grow suspicious of him consistently buying what should have been a lethal dosage. Thought about how they all gave him wary side-eyes anyway, how one refused to sell to him anymore because she thought he was competition, redistributing what he bought at a higher price. Thought about how, in the beginning, he took heroin to feel good for once, but now he didn’t even really get high, now he _needed_ it just to feel normal, to function–

“Yes, both, yes,” Peter sobbed, groaned, and gagged again.

“How much have you been taking, Peter? How often?”

“Fifty – fifty milligrams, like, four or five times a day, sometimes six – my metabolism–“

Bruce stared at him. Exhaled shakily. “Jesus Christ, Peter.”

An unfamiliar woman wearing pajamas and mussed hair all but ran into the room. Relief washed over Bruce’s face at the sight of her.

“Nurse Bolton,” he said with forced calm. “Would you please call Doctor Patel? Tell her we’re sorry to wake her, but we have an emergency. After that, scrub up. I’m gonna need your help.”

“Yes, Doctor Banner,” she said and hurried back out.

Bruce turned to him, and Peter crumbled. “I’m s-sorry, Bruce, I’m so sorry–“

“Stop,” Bruce said. “ _I’m_ sorry, Peter. I…miscalculated. I assumed you were taking a dosage within the normal range. I shouldn’t have. If I’d asked you these questions when you first came in, if I’d known about your metabolism – which I should have figured out for myself, I knew you were enhanced like Steve – we could have been prepared for this. I’m sorry that we aren’t.”

Peter bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that the ‘normal’ dosage of heroin was none. He knew what Bruce meant. “I should h-have – God, _ow_ – have made sure you knew. I’m an idiot.”

“No, you aren’t.” Bruce took a deep breath, laying a comforting hand on Peter’s forearm when he groaned again. “I’m not going to lie to you, Peter. The good news is, because of your metabolism, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours for your body to detox. The bad news is – also because of your metabolism – there’s nothing I can give you to help with the pain, and this is about to hurt like hell. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Didn’t it always?

* * *

It wasn’t long (thanks to Peter’s incessant begging of _please, I need Mister Stark, please_ ) before Bruce asked FRIDAY to wake Tony and let him know what was going on. Tony used the intercom to reply stiffly that he hadn’t been asleep, and he’d be there in five minutes. He burst through the door in two.

“Hey, PJs,” Tony whispered as he crouched beside the bed. He lifted a hand, hesitated, then placed it on Peter’s forehead. When Peter showed no signs of protest and, in fact, leaned eagerly into the touch, he proceeded to run his fingers through sweat-soaked hair.

“It hurts.” Peter whimpered, head thrashing on the pillow. “Mister Stark, please, it _hurts_.”

“I know, kid. I know. I’m here. You’re not alone, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Peter had never been in so much agony in his entire life and was certain – or hoped, at least – that he never would be again, but the promise of Tony’s presence was a slight comfort. He took it. He’d take whatever tiny glimmer of hope he could get.

“Stay?” Peter grappled for Tony’s free hand, locked onto his sleeve instead, and held it tight, anchoring himself. “Doctor Banner says ‘s gonna get worse. Please stay?”

Tony wrapped a hand around his bicep and squeezed.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

Peter was five, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

Aunt May looked at the plate of cookies on the counter and sighed as she turned to face him. The expression on her face was firm, but he could tell she was fighting off a smile of her own, the corners of her mouth twitching ever so slightly upwards.

“Hey, Cookie Monster,” she said. “I thought I told you no sweets before dinner?”

“I didn’t eat them!” Peter protested shrilly. “Maybe it was Uncle Ben.”

“Uncle Ben’s not home.”

“…oh.”

“And if you didn’t have any cookies, then what is _this?_ ”

May swiped a fingertip over his cheek. It came away bearing a blob of melted chocolate chip.

Peter feigned surprise. “Hey! Who put choc-it on my face?!”

“You know who the Cookie Monster’s arch enemy is, don’t you, Peter?” May raised her wiggling fingers, face and voice entirely overdramatized. “It’s…”

“ _Nooo!_ ”

“…the Tickle Monster!”

This was how Uncle Ben found them when he returned with their takeout dinner, Peter red-faced and giggling breathless as May tickled him without mercy.

They laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

* * *

Shadows danced across the walls, taunting him as he screamed, writhed, and cried. They hovered above him on the ceiling and threatened to devour him whole.

“Please, please, _no,_ please…”

A hand cupped his face. Something cool and wet moved across his forehead.

“It’s not real, kid. Whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t real. You’ve got a fever. You’re hallucinating.”

They looked real – they _felt_ real. How could they not be real?

“Mister Stark. Don’t let them get me. Don’t leave.”

“Already told you, PJs, I’m not going anywhere. You’ve got me.”

Peter drifted.

* * *

Peter lay on his stomach on the bottom bunk, face pressed into his flat pillow, and tried not to cry. Uncle Ben settled on the edge of the mattress and placed a comforting hand on his back.

“I hate Macey Evergreen,” Peter said sullenly, with all the angst and impending doom a thirteen year old could muster. “I hate her so much.”

Ben was, at least, sympathetic to his pity party. “I know, bud. Break-ups are hard. Hey – you wanna watch Empire Strikes Back? That always cheers you up.”

“No movie can cheer me up, Uncle Ben. Nothing can. She kissed Flash Thompson right in front of me. She _broke my heart._ ”

“Peter, you dated her for a week.”

Peter pressed his face deeper into the pillow and screamed.

Ben sighed, giving his back a few awkward pats. “Understandable. Ice cream?”

“…yes, please.”

* * *

Peter leaned over the side of the bed and heaved into the bucket held out for him. Nothing came up but water and bile.

“Mister Stark,” he gasped as he fell back against the pillows. “Please, I need some. Just one more time, the last time, just once.”

“You know I can’t do that, kid.”

“You’re supposed to help me. You said you would help me. Please.”

Bruce cut in. “We are helping you, Peter. It might not feel like it right now, but I promise, we are.”

“I hate you. I _hate_ you.”

Tony ran a cool cloth over his forehead and said easily, “No, you don’t.”

Peter pressed his face into the pillow and cried.

* * *

He was fifteen. Blood was spattered across his face and shirt. His eyes were dry and blank, staring at nothing. His hands shook.

In the police station lobby at two in the morning, an officer crouched in front of the hard plastic chair Peter occupied. He looked devastated.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, son. Is…is there anyone you want to call? Any other family? Somebody you could stay with?”

His family was dead. Peter shook his head, slow and mechanical.

“No, he said, void of all emotion, and closed his eyes. “I don’t have anybody.”

* * *

“Kill me. I can’t do this anymore, I can’t, just kill me.”

Tony’s hand, encasing his, tightened. “No can do. I’m a pacifist.”

It was a poor attempt at a joke for a violence-geared Avenger, and it fell horribly flat. Peter only cried in response.

“Tony,” Bruce sighed, then said to Peter, “You’re doing so well. We’re almost there, okay? You’re not vomiting anymore. That’s a good sign. Another hour, tops.”

“Mister Stark.” Peter turned to Tony with wide eyes. He didn’t even know what he was begging for at this point. Heroin. Death. A hug.

He could say none of it aloud. It was too big of an emotion for words. Regardless, Tony seemed to understand.

“I’m still here,” he said. “You’ve got me.”

For now, Peter decided, that would have to be enough.

* * *

The fever broke somewhere around noon. Clarity came shortly after.

Some residual aches and muscle cramps stuck around, but in comparison, they felt like heaven. Peter’s biggest issue now was the guilt, the embarrassment, the shame that filled his chest cavity, flooded his lungs like water. His face burned with the limited memory he had of the way he’d acted over the past several hours, the awful things he’d said.

“Well, _that_ was fun.” Tony slumped in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. Bruce stood changing Peter’s saline line, looking much more collected but equally as exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” Peter mumbled in their general direction, fidgeting with his hands in his lap. “For being so difficult. And for…for saying I hate you. I don’t hate you.”

Immediately, Tony sat up straight. “Hey, no. You don’t get to apologize for that. You were delirious. Happens to the best of us.”

Peter asked dryly, “The best of us get addicted to heroin?”

“Kid, you’re talking to a recovered alcoholic. You think I’ve never said anything terrible? Things I didn’t mean? And, shit, half of that was in front of a microphone. All these people are still kicking around my Tower anyway – though, to be fair, that might be because I feed them.”

Bruce’s face twitched with the beginnings of a smile. “We’re not stray cats, Tony.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“But it’s still not okay,” Peter pressed. “Like, the way I ended up here in the first place. The way I lived.”

Tony agreed without hesitation. “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay at all. But there’s a key here, PJs: _wasn’t._ Past tense. You fell, you made some shitty choices, but you’re picking yourself back up again. That counts for something, you know? That’s a point in your corner. That’s a victory.”

Peter nodded slowly, and said after a moment, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Um – Doctor Banner?”

“Yes, Peter?”

“Not that I’m not, you know, grateful and all that you helped me, because I am, but what happened to–“

Bruce smiled knowingly. “Doctor Patel? She was here for about five minutes. I sent her home.”

Peter blinked. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t let anyone besides Tony and I come within five feet of you. I told Nurse Bolton to take the day, too. There didn’t seem to be much point to them being here if they couldn’t effectively treat you.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Brucey. ‘Tony and I.’ Kid kept reaching for me like I was the damn messiah.”

Peter blushed harder than he ever had in his entire life. “Mister Stark, I’m so, so–“

“ _Don’t_ …” Tony held up a finger, “…say sorry, or I’ll cancel that order of applesauce and crackers I just asked Rogers to bring down for you.”

Hesitantly, ever so slightly, Peter smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s Tony. Not ‘sir,’ not ‘Mister Stark.’ T-O-N-Y. _Tony_.”

“You’ve got it, Mister Stark.”

Tony slid down in his seat and threw his head back with a groan. Bruce gave him a playfully sympathetic pat on the shoulder as he passed by. Now, Peter grinned in earnest.

He actually thought he might be able to get used to the Tower, and all the people inhabiting it.

Sucked that he’d have to leave soon.

* * *

A couple hours after sunset, Bruce ‘discharged’ Peter after giving him a rundown on the discomforts he might continue to experience with Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome – or _PAWS_ , an acronym which made Tony snort.

“I’ll see him out,” Tony offered.

Bruce smiled and shook Peter’s hand. “Bye, Peter. Take care of yourself.”

Peter rose to his feet, now clad entirely in new clothes and shoes Tony had purchased for him. He forced his own smile and tried not to cry. “Thank you. For everything.”

“Anytime.”

As Tony led him down winding corridors and into the elevator, Peter’s mind raced.

Where was he going to go? What was he going to _do?_

Back to sleeping on rooftops, he supposed. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d put up with it for six months already. What to do? He’d likely continue working with his old clients – only this time, the money would go toward feeding and eventually housing himself, not toward getting high.

He could do this. He was eighteen and a half. He was an adult. He’d be just fine.

He hoped.

“Alright, PJs, final stop,” Tony said as the elevator dinged, only –

Only Tony must have made a mistake. They’d gone from the third floor to the fifteenth, not to ground level. Obviously, he’d hit the wrong button.

But Tony stepped out and continued, “My room’s down this hall to the right, if you need anything. And if you get lost, ask FRIDAY, she’ll tell you where to go. The kitchen’s on the next floor up – help yourself to anything, obviously, and if you want something we don’t have, just ask FRI to put it on the list.”

Peter stepped out behind him, frowning.

“Uh…Mister Stark? I don’t think you–“

Tony waved him off with a sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I know, nobody wants the suite right by the elevators. That’s the only reason it’s still available. Sorry, kid, you drew the short end of the stick on this one–“

“What are you _doing?_ ”

Tony blinked at his sudden outburst. “I’m…showing you to your room? Considering you were sleeping on the streets, I just kind of assumed you didn’t have a place of your own that you liked better.”

Peter stared.

Oh.

_Oh._

Realization crashed into him like a tidal wave. For what felt like the thousandth time that day, he began to cry.

Unlike every other time he’d cried since he’d woken in agony, Peter did not feel the slightest bit sad.

Tony panicked. Peter could see it on his face, even through the tears obstructing his vision.

“Shit.” Tony placed two gentle hands on his shoulders. “I know I’m not always the best with words, but you’re gonna have to help me out here. What did I say this ti–“

Tony was cut off, releasing all his breath in one gust as Peter fell against his chest in some rough resemblance of a hug.

“Thank you.” Peter sniffled. “Thank you.”

Slowly, Tony’s arms rose to encircle him – and then it really _was_ a hug.

“You thought I was sending you back to the streets,” Tony said. It wasn’t a question. Peter nodded against his shoulder. “I told you that you’ve got me, Pete. Told you multiple times, in fact. I wasn’t just saying that for shits and giggles. I meant it. And I don’t go around making promises like that to just anyone, so when I do, you’d better believe it.”

Peter did.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for the reading the second installment of here comes the sun!
> 
> if you liked it, please considering leaving a kudos and/or comment, i would appreciate it deeply!
> 
> as always, you can find me on tumblr under the same username


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